A ringtone is a sound played on a phone handset, e.g., on a mobile cellular phone, to announce an incoming phone call. A ringtone is typically selected by the player of the phone receiving the call.
A ringback tone is a sound played on a phone handset when calling another phone. Typically, the tone is chosen by the owner of the dialed phone.
A video ringtone or video ringback tone is similar, but uses a video clip rather than an audio sound.
Prior patent applications U.S. 60/771,883 and 60/772,564, and their utility application, U.S. Ser. No. 11/544,938, assigned to the common assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference, define a variation of a video ringtone in which the video clip is chosen by the calling party to be displayed on the called handset.
These patent applications also disclose a community server, an Internet-based server that allows players to choose video clips to be distributed to their friends (or “buddies”). These clips, which may be downloaded at any appropriate time, may be associated with various triggering events and/or various buddies and may be played on the handset when the triggering events associated with the buddies occur.
These patent applications discuss a variety of other opportunities to present a video clip. For example, each might see a video clip at the end of a call between two handsets: one chosen by the player of that phone, or one chosen by the player of the other phone, or one chosen by the Vringo server.
Prior patent applications U.S. 60/816,888, and 60/829,896 and their utility application, U.S. Ser. No. 11/768,989, assigned to the common assignee of the present application and incorporated herein by reference, disclose a method and system for player-provided media content to be uploaded to the community server disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 11/544,938.